School transportation study group gets off to a slow start

Buses owned by First Student, a national transportation company and one of the increasingly few competitors in Rhode Island’s state school bus system, are seen on East Main Road in Portsmouth. The northernmost town on Aquidneck Island called on its legislative leaders to make statewide changes to school transportation after feeling it has been paying too much for state-regulated transportation services. (Ken Castro/Rhode Island Current)

How should students from preschool through high school in Rhode Island get to school?

The issue is urgent enough that in the most recent legislative session, the House and Senate passed a joint resolution Form a special commission to study school transportation in the Ocean State.

But in the new commission First meeting On Wednesday, the senator who helped craft that joint resolution had transportation concerns of her own.

“Unfortunately, Sen. Linda Ujifusa is unable to join us today because she is stuck on the tarmac on her way back from a legislative conference,” said Rep. Terri Cortvriend, the Portsmouth Democrat who introduced the House resolution.

“And the plane was delayed and then lost power. We hope he can return safely to Portsmouth at some point tonight, but he won’t be able to join us today.”

That meant Ujifusa, also a Portsmouth Democrat, would have to wait until the next meeting to be confirmed as commission co-chair. Cortvriend was unanimously confirmed as co-chair and commission members showed up and agreed on the date for the next meeting.

State law requires school districts to participate in a statewide transportation system run by the Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE) unless they apply for a waiver. A school district may be reimbursed, sometimes at a rate less than the promised 100%, for private school students it transports by bus within its own district.

But the district may not receive any reimbursement for children who attend school outside their home district, such as those with special needs or who attend technical schools like The Met, The Portsmouth Times recently reportedSchool districts can also request the use of their own buses for private school students, at the expense of sacrificing any state reimbursement.

Cortvriend said in an interview after Wednesday’s meeting that the 13-member study group will focus its efforts on three areas. The first involves the representative’s own Portsmouth district, which she said paid approximately $100 million for the 2018 meeting. $600,000 in out-of-district transportation in 2023.

Emily Copeland, a commission member and chair of the Portsmouth School Committee, said transportation “was a topic of great interest” at recent meetings, such as the one August 6thwhen Chris Diluro, the The district’s director of finance and administration said the district incurred costs of $80,000 to transport just two students, roughly the same cost as an entire bus.

The second group is the Bristol-Warren Regional School District, which is in the same region as the West Bay and Rhode Island’s urban core. The size of the bus zone means the district can pay more to transport students who sometimes travel significant distances if they attend certain schools.

“Bristol and Warren are clearly designated as East Bay in every other association and every other state agency,” said Ana Riley, the district’s superintendent who attended as a representative of the Rhode Island School Superintendents Association. “The only places we’re not in the East Bay are in these transportation regions.”

The state’s four transportation zones are, according to remarks Ujifusa gave Cortvriend to read, “a 50-year-old system.” But the way RIDE groups the state’s districts has been updated since its debut in 1977.

Victor Morente, a spokesman for RIDE, said in an email that the state’s transportation zones were restructured earlier this year when the state released a request for proposal for a quality bus service company that would also offer “the best value.” The contract was ultimately awarded to the Connecticut-based company. DATTCOwhich expanded its existing service districts to now provide bus service to most of the state. The transportation zone covered by DATTCO now spans from the East Bay to Woonsocket.

A third concern has to do with the imperfect system of Providence High School StudentsSome of whom may take public transport to school, something that can be witnessed on weekday mornings in the capital city, when students and commuters share packed buses along the city’s routes.

But that can be a problem “if the RIPTA bus doesn’t come, which sometimes it doesn’t,” Cortvriend said.

House Minority Leader Mike Chippendale, a Republican from Foster, and Rep. Joseph Solomon Jr., a Democrat from Warwick, were not present at the meeting, nor were several of the officially appointed members of the state agencies commission, most of whom sent appointees.

Cortvriend said it’s possible the commission’s final report, due in April 2025, could lead to legislative or administrative changes to how the state structures student transportation.

The commission is scheduled to meet again on 9 October.

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